I've got an external that's been weird and un-detectable by windows or apple for a while, but I plug it into Ubuntu and sure enough, it shows up (with most of the files missing, but I don't care I just want to wipe it and start over so my other computers can use it)

However, it shows up as an un-editable "500.0 GB Media" that won't show up in GParted. Is there anything I can do to wipe out the file system and start over?

At this point I'm ready to take a giant magnet to this thing if that's your best suggestion. Please help

Thanks,
- Keith

detroit/zero

November 17th, 2008, 12:31 AM

Sounds like that drive is all messed up. GParted also has a livecd version that you can boot into. Maybe you'll have better results with that. There are also forensic-recovery type livecds that you can download and run in that should give you more tools to play with..

There's Helix3 (http://www.e-fense.com/helix/) (I've never used this one but I'm downloading it now to mess with - says it's Ubuntu Based...);
FCCU Linux (http://news.softpedia.com/news/FCCU-GNU-Linux-32327.shtml) - Knoppix based;
BackTrack (http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/BackTrack) is good for a lot of things but don't expect any help in their forums unless you consider "RTFM (http://www.roflmaobbq.com/)!" help;
Here's a list (http://http://www.darknet.org.uk/2006/03/10-best-security-live-cd-distros-pen-test-forensics-recovery/) of the 10 best security distros, most (if not all) of which run from livecd;
There's always SecurityDistro.com (http://www.securitydistro.com/) for a small selection/news about new distros;
And, of course, Google is your friend (http://www.darknet.org.uk/2006/03/10-best-security-live-cd-distros-pen-test-forensics-recovery/).

Good luck.

Carl Hamlin

November 17th, 2008, 12:36 AM

I've got an external that's been weird and un-detectable by windows or apple for a while, but I plug it into Ubuntu and sure enough, it shows up (with most of the files missing, but I don't care I just want to wipe it and start over so my other computers can use it)

However, it shows up as an un-editable "500.0 GB Media" that won't show up in GParted. Is there anything I can do to wipe out the file system and start over?

At this point I'm ready to take a giant magnet to this thing if that's your best suggestion. Please help

Thanks,
- Keith

With a drive acting that twonky, I'd hesitate to put anything on it I cared about.

If the drive is IDE, what position are you using it in?

KeithA45

November 17th, 2008, 01:46 AM

With a drive acting that twonky, I'd hesitate to put anything on it I cared about.

If the drive is IDE, what position are you using it in?

To be honest with you, I have no idea which kind of drive it is and I'm not sure what you mean by position (I'm new to Linux). For now, all I know is that I just showed up on the desktop, it says the Location is on the desktop, the Mount Point is "/media/disk", the File System is "hfsplus", and the mount options are are: